Chorizo Crepes

The town down the hill recently extruded a restaurant featuring crepes. I knew before the place even opened that I would never go in there. Because I saw through the twenty-foot-tall glass walls that they had placed a bottle of Heinz ketchup on every table.

Crepes are quintessentially French, while ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid produced by Germans who don't understand salsa. Throughout much of France Skinner-ratatouille.jpgketchup is actually banned, and for sure if you go into a restaurant there and order crepes, and then ask for ketchup, the chef will come at you from out of the kitchen, screaming and waving a cleaver.

Germans like Heinz and Hunts pummelled the Americans with ketchup for many years, but that is over now. Which buggers me why these crepes-people would put out the ketchup now, when ketchup has clearly become a buggywhip in the foods. Among the Americans, salsa sales surpassed that of ketchup more than twenty-five years ago; the hamburger, another invention of Germans with names like Otto and Oscar, is also coughing up blood, stomped now every year in the sales by tortillas.

Ketchup is today mainly used by the Americans to smother the french fries—which are not French, or, really, food. Officially, they are classified as toxic fat tubes, purposed to blow out your aorta. When the Bushmen were preparing for War On Saddam II, some of the Piltdown Men in the Congress renamed the french fries in the House cafeterias “freedom fries.” This is because the French had told the Americans they were not having anything to do with War On Saddam II, because they knew the notion of Iraq possessing “weapons of mass destruction” was just shit made up, and they knew this because a member of Saddam’s cabinet was on their payroll; the Piltdown Men then commenced 1806193.jpgthe St. Vitus Dance, declaring that everywhere in the language "french" must be replaced by "freedom," their sickness spreading among the Americans, readily infecting those who would some years later become the people of The Hairball. The French, they gave no shits that the french fries had become freedom fries—the very idea that something that is served in a McDonalds would have a French name, this anyway makes the French want to stab and shoot. Which is why sometimes when you are French, you jump on the bulldozer, and you mow down the McDonalds. You then become a Hero, and Juliette Binoche says you should be the president; you haven’t made it there, yet, but you are in the European Parliament.

The Germans have never bulldozed a McDonalds, because that would violate Order. Also, they do not really mind a McDonalds, so long as the hamburgers are pickled, and the beer is served in a stein the size of a horse.

The Germans have proved adept at many things—music, philosophy, jumping in tanks and driving at top speed for thousands of miles, crushing everything in their path—but they have never really successfully grappled with food. This can be understood when you sit down to a traditional German meal. You will be presented with a plate upon which rests the leg of some animal, still covered in fur. They will want you to dip the leg in a great festering urn of pickled cabbage, exuding a stench so powerful it can chase skunks from the room. The leg is also used to stir the soup, in which whole apples float, as well as many specimens of a demonic variety of bean, which start loudly belching out farts before you even eat them. Meanwhile there is zungenwurst, a tongue covered in oatmeal. The bread is so hard and so dense it is used by the police as a nightstick; you smear it with griebenschmalz, which is spreadable pig fat studded with pork rinds and onion chunks. Dessert is a thing called speck: pure pig fat. If you start snooping around the house of your hosts, you will discover that all of the Germans have somewhere in their homes a secret shrine devoted to the worship of sülze—pig snouts embedded in aspic.

2e1ax_rt_photon_entry_GoutHumor.jpgWhen it comes to the food, the Germans can at least say they are not the British, whose cuisine is limited to blood and boiling. When, back in their day, the British were rampaging all over the globe, they were constrained from making even more of a mess by the fact that at least half their rich rat bastards were at any one time crippled by gout, brought on by a diet consisting solely of huge chunks of beef, spewing blood, washed down with endless bottles of Bordeaux, filched from the French.

If you have a crepe in Germany, there will be a hoof in it; if in Britain, some hideous, quivering, pudding.

In the town down the hill the crepes place is open now, and sometimes I walk by and can see through the glass the humans sitting at the tables studded with the Heinz ketchup bottles.

Why in the humans do the restaurants have walls of glass that confront passersby with the spectacle of the diners inside gnawing on fur-legs and feeding from big bowls of weeds? In the homes of the humans the dining rooms are not glass-walled and placed right on the street so everybody can observe the occupants inside worshipping the sülze. So, I don't get it.

Anyway, on the plates of the humans, there in the crepes place, are these slabs. And these slabs do not resemble any crepes I have ever met. I know some of crepes, because for many years I was making crepes pretty much at all times. Because they were among my daughter's favorite foods. These were Breton crepes; Brittany, or Bretagne, if you speak French, rather than "freedom," is where crepes were born. Brittany is where live the Celts who did not get on the boats and sail off to become the Irish. When the Celts got to Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danann were already there; these did not want to get involved in any stupid human fighting about 6429755667_8a084cbf34_o.jpgwho got to live where, so they became trees. This is why in Ireland everyone is nice to the trees. Also in Ireland, sometimes you have to divert the roads, so as not to disturb the fairies.

Sometimes Brittany gets into the news of the Americans. Like when The Nazi went there, trying to be the French president, and the Bretons barked at her like dogs, and pelted her with eggs.

The Bretons have a long and storied history of not putting up with fuckwits. In 1382, Charles VI, alleged king of France, decided he would invade Brittany. But, while he was riding forth, all kingly and shit, on his horse, a Breton ran at him from out of the woods, grabbed at his garments, and commenced magical babbling. While various courtiers chased the Breton back into the woods—where he promptly disappeared—Charles proceeded to lose all of his mind. He began slashing at his people with his sword, foaming and raving; they managed to subdue the fellow, and tie him down in a cart, and then they bounced him back to Paris. Charles spent much of the rest of his life sitting petrified in a chair in his palace, afraid that if he moved he would shatter, as he was convinced he was made of glass.

So, it isn't wise, to mess with the Bretons. But, if you do, it is probably best to mess with them with calvados. This is a brandy distilled from apples—there are more apples in Brittany than were planted by Johnny Appleseed, or even than are in that Wizard of Oz orchard of grumpy apple trees that look like late-form Bette Davis—and sometimes the Bretons will drink so much of it they will need to lie down, and then they will either not notice, or not care, that the Atlantic Ocean is washing in and swirling around under the bed, as set forth in Emile Zola's true-life non-fiction tome La Joie De Vivre.

Calvados is one among many alcohols that do not often make it to the Americans. Another is retsina, which the Greeks make from needles. Airag, that is fermented mare's milk, which the Mongols drink as they ride to the gates of Vienna. Then there is raicilla, a 180-proof brain-bender the Jaliscans conjure out of cactus. Richard Burton was powered by raicilla night_of_the_iguana-739301.jpgthroughout the filming of The Night Of The Iguana: “if you drink it straight down,” he marveled to one reporter, “you can feel it going into each individual intestine.” Burton, controlled by raicilla, and hallucinating that Sue Lyons has entered the room, can be seen in that photo over there to the right.

All of the humans are always trying to alter consciousness. Because there are Hairballs.

Sometimes the Bretons put the calvados in the crepes. Usually with apples. Then they set the crepes on fire. Because they are pyromaniacs. I do not use a flamethrower, when making the crepes. Otherwise I adhere to the Breton method, using buckwheat flour, and cooking them only on one side—this presumably because the Bretons are in too much of hurry to eat them, to cook both sides. Then I fold inside Breton-approved innards: a little Roland dijon mustard, gruyere, ham. Westphalian ham is best, though if you live among the Americans, it costs more than cocaine. Also, you have to check to make sure the ham doesn't glow in the dark, because the pigs wandering about eating acorns, who become the Westphalian ham, are sometimes brushed by wind blowing in off Chernobyl, or wherever else the Russians might happen to be melting the nuke fuel at the moment.

Throughout civilization, Westphalian ham can only be called such if it is made of acorn-fed pigs raised in the forests of Westphalia. However, if you are marooned among the Americans, you will be beset by criminals from the Hairball regions who will try to Fool you with some trotters they found on the floor and then pronounced "Westphalian ham." Similarly, in civilization, "Black Forest ham" must come from pigs raised in Germany's Black Forest. But, if you are an American, you can buy a big barrel of snouts, grind them up, slap some caramel on them, and announce you have produced "Black Forest ham."

The Italians are meanwhile grimly pursuing a nuclear program, because the Americans will not stop dumping sawdust in a can and calling it "Parmesan cheese." The Italians have concluded that only by making nuke bombs and putting them on missiles and aiming those missiles at the Americans, can the Americans perhaps be persuaded to cease their wanton defilement of the Italians' sacred parmigiano-reggiano, the god-emperor of cheese.

It occurs to me that Westphalian ham is German. Therefore I must withdraw all those Libels I inscribed above about the Germans aeb0cd12aafc5d4d08d3e93d0ef77af5--mushroom-stew-hookah-lounge.jpgand the hair-legs and the tongue-oatmeal and the sülze-shrines and whatnot. I'm sorry.

When you bake the crepes, the oven emits odors of wonder.

There is a Breton variation involving putting mushrooms in the crepes. But I prefer my mushrooms raw, and with purple veins in them. With these, I can See things. There is a book that explains that such mushrooms are extraterrestrials who came to the earth to help the humans Grow Brains. This is working. It could, however, work faster. Which is why humans in the Hairball-Free Zone of California are now involved in a voter thingy that would allow the humans to eat these mushrooms without going into the jail. Once this is accomplished, then it won't matter even if the state is assaulted by frenzied hordes of knuckledraggers ululating beneath the banner of The Hairball. Because the humans can then just become trees.

Recently I walked by the crepes place in the town down the hill and saw on the sidewalk a signboard urging me inside to consume "chorizo crepes." This amused me pleasantly. As yet another in the ceaseless series of signs and wonders that, Hairballs notwithstanding, the Americans are browning.

Spanish chorizo, that is generally cooked and cured and stuffed in a casing, and can be wielded as a weapon, like a good stick of salami, if a chair leg or baseball bat is not at hand.

But I knew this was not the sort of chorizo the crepes-people wanted me to come eat. They wanted me, instead, to feast on Mexican chorizo. Which is a bruja brew of animal parts you really don't want to know anything about, that are subsumed in many powerful spices, so that you will not know or care that you are eating cheeks, lips, lymph nodes, salivary glands, and various other assorted sorts of offal.

A crepe doesn't really want Mexican chorizo in it, but that is just too bad. Because in the town down the hill, chorizo is in everything—even the milkshakes. This is because the town down the hill, it is a college town. And the first thing that an American human does, lecture_drunk-png.jpgwhen s/he goes off to college, is Drink. Then, inelcutably, the collegian Suffers. The sufferer then searches, desperately, for a means by which to relieve that suffering. The sufferer is then introduced, by those who have so suffered before, to chorizo. Because Mexican chorizo, and especially when mixed with scrambled eggs, contains, within its endless outpourings of spiced pig-face grease, some magical mystery tour of healing properties, sufficient to reduce the Suffering at least to a place where the sufferer will not Die, from the Drinking.

The crepes-place, it was clear, with its "chorizo crepes" signboard, was trying to convince the humans to ingore its ketchup anathema, and come on in, there to relieve, with the chorizo, the effects of their bibulating.

A lot of the Americans who are mobile without walkers, they do not understand that not so long ago there was not really any Mexican food easily available to the white people, there in their land. This now nearly unimaginable dearth of Mexican food can be apprehended in the true-life documentary film Peggy Sue Got Married, in which an American boy of 1960 informs a time traveler that he knows what is a burrito, while the rest of the Americans do not, because he has been to Mexico, while they have not.

Today, of course, the burrito has thoroughly conquered the Americans, so much so that burritos will be ceaselessly churning through the Americans' digestive systems, all day, and all of the night, long after the bland German fat-patty that is the hamburger has been relegated to a Museum.

A couple years before the "chorizo crepes" experience I was walking to the Syrian cigarette store when I encountered a similar browning-of-the-Americans signboard.

What is now the Syrian cigarette store, when I first lived in these parts, was owned by a blazingly white Piltdown Man, so outre and extreme that when I interviewed him for the newspaper it was hard to believe he was even Real. He freely opined that black people were a form of monkey invented by Jews to burn all the cities and rapine all the white women. Brown people were supposed to mow his lawn and trim his roses and if they wanted for this to be paid, he would just call the Government, and have them Deported. Brown people in the Middle East, they needed gordon-ramsay_fb_2251693.jpgto be melted by nukes, so long as their oil would not then glow in the dark.

This man's brother, he was the "sane" one in the family, and started out as a "liberal," a schoolteacher, all for "the working class" and shit—until the black and brown and red people, and the women, there among the Americans, said maybe they would like to be humans too . . . at which time he proceeded to become controlled by Fear, of the Other, and so rushed into the politics, and there attained elective office, so he could introduce avalanches of legislation designed to forever freeze the Americans in 1952.

Both these men eventually died, as humans will inevitably do, and today the Piltdown Man's store is run by Syrians, who speak at all times in Arabic, and bring into the country, past The Hairball's gauleiters, ceaseless streams of "illegal immigrant" Syrians who refuse absolutely to take up arms for any of the 693 forms of dumbshit who at present in that country are all about killing people. Some of them are Christians, some of them are Muslim, some of them maybe worship Beelzebub, but what shit does that give? All of them are about not killing people; thus, all of them, are godly.

Sometimes I go out to the boneyard and help the people working there drive these big Humvee-like lawnmowers that both trim the grass and also knock back into the grave golems like this guy who used to run the Syrian cigarette place and is now having an undead Frenzy and trying to climb out because there are brown people all over what was once his Store.

Anyway. While walking to the Syrian cigarette store, a couple years ago, I passed a signboard that read: "Pancake Breakfast." And, scrawled under those words, like sort of in italics, was "And Burritos."

I loved that so much. A "pancake breakfast," that is a complete white-people thing. Where you go, early on a weekend morning, into an Oddfellows Hall, or onto a AR-160609842.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667.jpegcovered bridge, or something like that, and there you eat pancakes, for which you have forked over dollars, for some sort of worthy white-people charity.

A traditional pancake breakfast: as white as the Bee Gees.

But, now, there were burritos in it.

The pancake breakfasts, they had gone brown.

Through many decades, I would recurrently write in the newspapers, that the white people, they had better hope, that when the brown people inevitably became ascendant, they would not treat the white people, as the white people had treated them.

And, as it happens, they have not.

Here, in the Hairball-Free Zone of California, in this moment, the white people are but 38% of the population. And that precentage is declining, in every second. Yet, here, no one shoves the white people off the sidewalk. They are not redlined into barrios. They are not told they cannot speak their language, practice their customs; vote.

It is perfectly fine, fine and free, to be among the white minority, here in the Hairball-Free Zone of California. If only the people of The Hairball, they could understand, experience: this. Know that they need not live, in Fear.

But, fear: that is why, they are people of The Hairball. If they did not live in fear, they would not adhere to The Hairball. Because a Hairball, can only live on fear. Without it, he would shrivel into a small, gnarled turd. And be flushed, quickly and quietly, down the pooper.

An amazing thing happened this past weekend—more amazing even than that the chorizo is crawling into the crepes—in that, for the first time, to my knowledge, a deliberative legislative body of the white people, voted that brown people, in actual physical existence, are more important than the figment of some white-people "government."

This occurred when humans in the United States Senate of the Americans decided it was more important to stand by brown people tijuna0812110717_cropped.jpgwho had no "papers," proving they were "citizens," than it was to continue to funnel money to the "United States government"—which is, of course, just shit made up.

For a time, thereby, these humans shut down the government—which came as a great relief to the government, which doesn't really want to remain open, so long as there is a Hairball; it is too embarrassed, the government, to be anywhere near open, while The Hairball, is at its head.

The Democrats of course quickly caved—Science Men, it is said, are nearing a Conclusion, that those who get into the government and there identify as "Democrats," are invariably fatally impaired by a congenital "cave" gene—but, before they did, they presented to the world the bright shining wonderment of a legislative body advocating that humans should be allowed to live on certain dirt, though they have no Papers, at all, entitling them to said dirt, and any "government," claiming to exercise Power over such dirt, should just Fuck Off.

These crippled caved Democrats, they had voted for, if not understood, the bedrock human principle: "free human being, alive on this earth."

They voted that brown people, who had burrowed in, to try to become Americans, they were worthy, of more Real, than the entire United States government.

How is this not. Oh happy day.

Of course, the Democrats standing on their own hind legs: it didn't last long.

But: so what. Heigh-ho. Nobody home. Meat nor drink nor money have I none. Yet. Shall. I. Be. Merry.

My companero M, he lived in the mountains, for many years, and came down understanding, that humans, they are descended from trees: humans, realized he, are trees, with feet.

My companera T, she heard trees talk, when she was a child, but had to shut them off, so she would not be confined, by humans drooling and knuckledragging and not understanding, in a Facility.

Some can be humans, and some can be trees, and some can be both, and more—quantum—all at the same time.

Like: you, and me, and all of we: here: in: he.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4dRTfQ9Rkg]

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Raggedy Ann's picture

chorizo. It’s healing qualities are undeniable. Menudo is a soup made from those same ingredients as in chorizo. Menudo is known as the best hangover cure around these parts.

I make my husband a burrito every day for his morning break. As a brown woman, I’m thrilled to know I’m already participating in a beautiful movement for change.

Wonderful read. Pleasantry

up
0 users have voted.

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Wink's picture

phat juicy cheeseburger deluxe and fries for lunch and I'm good to go. mayo-ketchup mix for the fries.

up
0 users have voted.

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

hecate's picture

@Wink @Wink
is regarded throughout all universes as such an Anathema and Evil that the humans will never be permitted to rise out of their gravity well until they have thoroughly cleansed and repented themselves of such Unutterable Foulness.

up
0 users have voted.
janis b's picture

@hecate

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@janis b
vinegar is the dominant ingredient, the alleged foodstuff must be hurled against the wall. Vinegar is what happens when you grind arse-hairs of The Hairball into juice. Nobody wants that effluent, undiluted, undisguised, on their tongue.

up
0 users have voted.
janis b's picture

@hecate

you'll find a combo here.

up
0 users have voted.
Wink's picture

on that hit parade
@janis b
and you'll find my fave
German side dish, pomme frittes w/ mayo.
Add a cold pint of Hoffbrau and you're good to go!

up
0 users have voted.

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Wink

mayo-ketchup mix for the fries.

Or poutine, which is of truly Divine origin, say nay whosoever will.

Wink

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

hecate's picture

@thanatokephaloides
humans like different foods. The French, at present, they are rioting over Nutella.

There were scenes of hysteria and reports of shoppers acting like "animals" in French supermarkets on Thursday, all because of a discount on pots of Nutella.

"They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand. It was horrible," one customer at the Rive-de-Gier supermarket in central France told Le Progres newspaper.

In Ostricourt in northern France, the police were called in when supermarket customers resorted to fisticuffs, and similar scenes were also reportedly seen in Roubaix in the Nord department, as well as Wingles and Marles-les-Mines in Pas-de-Calais.

The mad pursuit to get a €4.50 pot for the discount price of €1.40 also saw employees caught up in the fray.

In the village of L'Horme in the Loire in central France, one staff member told Le Progres newspaper: "We were trying to get in between the customers but they were pushing us." They compared the scenes to the Battle of Berezina fought between the French army and Russia in 1812.

At the Intermarché in Saint-Cyprien in southern France, people threw themselves on the employee carrying the Nutella pots on a pallet.

In the words of one Intermarché employee, from the northeastern French town of Forbach, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to Agence France-Presse: “People just rushed in, shoving everyone, breaking things. It was like an orgy. We were on the verge of calling the police.”

All over the country, similar Nutella outbursts—some of which were even described as “riots”—erupted on Thursday. In some cases, the authorities even had to be called in to restore order.

up
0 users have voted.
Lily O Lady's picture

@hecate

destruction of forests where non-hairball orange orangutans used to live. We could do with less Nutella, or at least a reformulation of same.

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

thanatokephaloides's picture

@hecate

humans like different foods.

In very deed.

Dolley Madison, the President's wife who is usually credited with the introduction of ice cream into the White House, had a favorite flavor of the same. It was Mark Twain's favorite as well.

Oyster.

Today, savory ice cream is essentially extinct. But during 19th Century America, it was all the rage!

The French, at present, they are rioting over Nutella.

A food no one should buy unless and until Nutella agrees to use only responsibly-sourced palm oil -- or, better still, more ecologically responsible substitutes like peanut oil etc.

I like my great ape kinfolks, especially orangutans. And palm oil harvesting is killing off the orangutans.

Bad

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@Wink
And curly fries with a ranch dipping sauce and lots and lots of ketchup. There's quite a few "gourmet burger" places here in Oakland with fancy menu descriptions and triple the prices of my mushroom burger place.

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

Wink's picture

the Left Coast - Mtn.
View - I'll make the drive
@Timmethy2.0
to Oakland for one of those. I hope to
spend winters there. Not next winter (sigh), but the winter after, with any luck. Summers are great here in the Great White North, but they only last about 9, 10 weeks. Winters, sadly, last forever, so I hope to soon spend them in Cali, where they're much shorter. The mushroom burger sounds like it's worth the drive.

up
0 users have voted.

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

hecate's picture

@Wink
in California too. If you are some humans, and you are trying to get through the High Sierra, and you don't make it by the time winter settles in, then your food becomes each other.

up
0 users have voted.
janis b's picture

and end up at surprise destinations. It’s fun, it’s informative, it’s bold, and it’s promising.

I felt as if I was watching a short film. The narration is so wonderfully paced and descriptive that your words turn effortlessly into pictures and stories.

You sure chose the wurst German foods ; ).

Thanks.

up
0 users have voted.
janis b's picture

@janis b

and I can't wait to read the episode when you actually step through the door and order a crepe.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@janis b @janis b
never going in there. They have Heinz bottles on the tables. That is like a MAGA hat.

up
0 users have voted.
WaterLily's picture

@hecate Same red color, too.

Maybe the people of The Hairball can smother their MAGA hats in arse-hair effluent (vinegar, after all, is a dominant ketchup ingredient), and stuff them down their cake-holes.

up
0 users have voted.
riverlover's picture

There was green beer and a food array that looked interesting. That is until I dipped into a mound of "dip" and discovered it was an animal fat dip. I used the napkin spit technique. But the breads were good!

up
0 users have voted.

Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

ketchup rules.

it is, incidentally, one of the few foods in the US whose ingredients are subject to control. you cannot, for example, add starch so as to artificially thicken it. at least, that's what i read, years ago. the article claimed that heinz used to drive the hunts people nuts with those ads showing that hunts ketchup was runnier than heinz -- the hunts kitchen just could not figure out how heinz did it. the secret supposedly turned out to be having the processing plant close to the farms -- the tomatoes needed to be turned into ketchup very promptly.

btw, the usual story is that it started out as a chinese sauce that somehow morphed into the tomato-based stuff we have today. blame "the germans" if you will, i care not. and hate on pommes frites all you like, poutine is here to stay.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@UntimelyRippd
The Romans were notorious for processing anchovies into a fermented fish sauce called "garum" that they then used on everything, and I mean everything.

Mutatis mutandis, the idea stuck around with varying ingredients (mushrooms were a great favorite in the 18th and well into the 19th century) until gradually tomatoes squeezed everything else out. Some indefinite time before then, the British East India Company had brought back a Southeast Asian word (variously referred to as "kôe-chiap" or "kê-chiap" (both meaning "pickled fish" and referring to a sauce remarkably similar to Roman "garum"), and applied it to the familiar homebrew.

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

hecate's picture

@UntimelyRippd
to remain relevant, they are now peddling "hot and spicy" ketchup. It is not working. Not even an infant, would detect heat in that stuff.

up
0 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Tomatoes are from the New World, a world of brown people. Oh, and Red people too.
In fact, most of the food consumed worldwide today came from the Pre- Columbian Americas.
Potatoes, corn, squash, tomatoes, nearly all varieties of bean, avocadoes, bannanas, chocolate, tobacco (eckk) and peppers were all found in the Americas and exported to the known world.
Just sayin'.

up
0 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

hecate's picture

@earthling1
so much suffering in the food, before there were chili peppers. Somewhere around here is a book wherein a guy describes faithfully following some 13th-15th Century European recipes, and getting knocked on his ass by all the black pepper. They were trying to get to spicy, and black pepper was the best they could do. The Turks eventually cut off the white people's land route to the black pepper, so the white people had to get in ships, and start sailing. Thus, the chili pepper got into the food, worldwide. One of my favorties is the rendang of the matriarchal Muslims of Sumatra, which is basically one pound of beef, and one pound of chili peppers. They cook it down to dried fire-slabs that accompany them on the long pilgrimage to Mecca.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

hecate, are you hungry and what would you like to eat? I would prepare it for you. I hereby attest that I, German as it gets, have never eaten, what they call "Schweinshaxe", which I think you refer to as " the leg of some animal, still covered in fur." Because try to eat a Schweinshaxe with a fork and a knife. Really hard to do. So you can eat it with your hands. That works. And it can be juicy, fat and crispy outside.

Well, crepes. They are called "Pfannkuchen" in German and are thicker and more filling you up. Why not? I make simple Pfannkuchen and it works. With jam or apple sauce or simply a bit of sugar on top. Can't eat more than one and a half of them.

Hmm, so you think a 'Hamburger' comes from Hamburg, Germany? Nah, we have "Bouletten" that is not the same as your "US Hamburger". I have to admit that "Bouletten" are just eating something that feels afterwards like a stone in your stomach. I can't stand "Bouletten" for that reason and can't stand "US Hamburger" too, but I like them more than our "Bouletten", because they are more juicy and fatty and all the "good stuff". Ha.

So, you don't like Freedom Fries, don't like "Pommes Frites"? How about "Pommes" that are German versions of fatty, salty, disgusting french fries. With lots of curry powder, ketchup and a "Curry Wurst" on top of it. You have to be extremely hungry to get seduced by them, but you know 'it happens' sometimes.

Ketchup, oh well, who cares for ketchup?

When I was a very young, and sometimes very poor student, I used to work in the Restaurant chain "Wienerwald". They had on the table what you were looking at, bottles with kethup, bottles with "Maggie Würze", some bread sticks and some Pretzels, all stuff you would never buy to cook with in your own home. But I detested those displays for other reasons. People used to steal them from the tables and me miffed waitress had to pay the Restaurant for the stolen goods, as I did not pay enough attention to those things on the table.

So, I hereby recommend you for the position of a waitress at "Wienerwald". I am sure you love those Ketchup and Maggie bottles so much, you would watch and guard them properly.

Blutwurst, you have to throw up just thinking about that Wurst? Well, it is edible and if seasoned right, it is digestible. But you have to be extremely hungry to swallow it down with your eyes closed, I guess.

You said, you do not get it. Ok, here is the secret, if you ever go into a restaurant in Germany, go into the ones, which do not offer "genuine German dishes". Having eaten in a lot of US restaurants run by Asian immigrants, I can assure you our immigrants in Germany are better than yours amd their restaurants serve excellent Asian dishes.

And you get a "Best political food dish" reward, presented by the readership association of the C99p.

Beautifully written, though I could not finish it, I got so hungry, I had to eat my "Wurst" first. But one thing is for sure, I will get hungry for your political food again and finish reading your "Riesenbockwurst" essay.

Give rose

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@mimi
I am pleased you received my many Libels about the Germans in good cheer. I will certainly consider working as a waitress at the Wienerwald. Will I have to wear an apron, or a little cap? I don't have much German, and so suppose I will have to communicate mostly through grunting and pointing. That seems to work for The Hairball.

There is a restaurant in Normandy that specializes in calf's head. It has offered to cook and serve Hairball head, but so far he is not cooperating.

up
0 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

@mimi

where my favorite place, Der Wienersnitzel, fits into this discourse.
Mmmm, slathered in chili and topped with cheese and chopped onion. A dash of pepper and a few paper napkins makes a heavenly meal on the go.
Damn, now I gotta plan another trip down south to California.

up
0 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

hecate's picture

@earthling1
a true confession: when I was a child, and the family would go to the Straw Hat Pizza Parlor, I would demand we stop first at Der Wienersnitzel, so I could load up on hot dogs to eat, while the rest of them consumed the pizza.

up
0 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

@hecate

chateau "A" frames and the chilli dogs were 18 cents apiece?

up
0 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

hecate's picture

@earthling1
it was an A frame. I A-Frame_c036e9c4-5056-b365-ab7cbdc521f34caa.jpgdon't know what that's about. Is it supposed to be a Black Forest chalet?

I'm kind of hazy on the prices; my parents were paying. ; )

up
0 users have voted.

I had fun reading this essay, laughed my ass off, went back and read it over and laughed more.

What happens when an eating place has no windows, and you don't notice ketchup until you're stuffed in a booth (or similar)? What if they bring it after you start eating, and set it on the next table? Fun! In fact I am never going to forget this essay, I think it might have gone straight in to the trap. If I ever step foot inside an eatery again, it will trigger ketchup radar ~doink!~, with Carly Simon singing in the background.

For sure I am shopping at the Mexican market when it opens this morning, but where I really want to go is the deli about a half mile further. Every morning a guy is outside with a big stainless vat of fat, and he is deep frying ham hocks or some kind of "parts", and a couple of others are smashing garlic gloves with their bare hands BAM! then tossing them in while he stirs. Once I started crying the smells made me soo hungry, and I can't afford deli food. I love deep fried food, it makes me happy to even think about it.

This essay was filling. It tasted great! Thanks.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@eyo
I was preparing something or other, and a woman who would have to eat it, she said: "you know, not everything needs garlic."

Actually, she was Wrong. Pretty much everything does need garlic. Except maybe chocolate.

up
0 users have voted.

@hecate I can't remember the third one, from sampling a new edible that is a combination of both; one chocolate covered espresso bean with added cannabanoids, a thing my provider called "micro-dosing". There is a blueberry version too, also covered with the joy of Brown.

Jeffrey B.Sessions the Third come on down. There needs be a modern day Electric Kool-Aid test in D.C., whereby he gets a constant micro-dose with every meal. Happy Meal Biggrin One for the Precedent too why not. A girl can dream.

up
0 users have voted.
Bisbonian's picture

"free human being, alive on this earth."

That does it for me, ketchup or no ketchup.

up
0 users have voted.

"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

And I do believe I tried to like it when I was a kid because, well, everyone else did. Never took and I have no regrets. Pommes w/mayo though, now those I dearly love, first time I tried them was in Germany and I was in heaven. And the beer? Well, I don't think I need to extoll the German beer to anyone out here who loves beer, great stuff and one hell of a buzz off of it too. Oh, and the bread, I don't think I ever had bad bread while in Germany. Cheese too. The wursts I am not such a fan of but then again a nice Brautwurst on brochen is a very nice meal, along with the Pommes and beer.

up
0 users have voted.

Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

earthling1's picture

Your essays ramble on to so many places and directions that it forces me to continue reading just to see where you're gonna leave me.
You make that muscle in my head stretch and bend so.
Thank you for the wake up.
I somehow feel better now.

up
0 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

You are dissin' his #1 vegatable! Smile

up
0 users have voted.

You always remind me of various of the great humourists I (rather vaguely) recall enjoying; the only one I can currently recall the name of, though, is Eric Nichol, although he's rather dated now and not the best example, and I'm much happier reading your essays.

I keep thinking that this place attracts such outstanding writers, as well as the informed, and I feel very fortunate to be here to read all this.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Ellen North living in southern new england where the portugees is the dominant culture (no more whales to hunt) but most are from the azores. had to leave the islands as there wasn't enough work for them there. Somehow New Bedford and Fall River became their mecca. I love to listen to the local portugees radio station as I can't make hither nor yon of what is said, but it is so musical. Very refreshing compared to the amerispeak, which I can translate, but still don't understand.
So the portugeese chorize (pronounced shorees) is all that crappy meat spiced beyond recognition. Very popular around here. But if you want to tantalize the soul of a displaced ex-pat, just mention 'blade meat'. It is like gathering all of the collective grand mamas of the entire culture into one imagined gastronomic orgasm. Not sure of the actual ingredients (tough meat in peppa sauce sliced thin and grilled), but if you are lucky enough to be blessed with 'blaaade meet' heaven is only a swallow away.
Then I found a quick recipe to make crepes with tortillas dipped in egg and cream. The people loved them, although I cooked them on both sides. Now with this new profound knowledge, I can start driving a truck around with the words 'blaaaade meet' plastered on the side, use tortillas (no one will know) and fill it with that magic memory of gran mamas 'Blaaade meet' and make a million bucks! They'll be following me like a pack of starving dogs. Life is good.

up
0 users have voted.

@QMS

That sounds good! (General disclaimer: speaking as a heretic who likes ketchup and vinegar on fries and dislikes gravy.)

Lol, I'll watch your future career with considerable interest; once you've made your billions, maybe you could buy the Presidency? (Please get rich quick!)

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

hecate's picture

@QMS
a fascinating tale, and I wish you great success in your new business. When time is right, you should post a photo of your truck, or even a video clip of you driving the truck down the street, making the "blaaaade meat" call.

The Americans elected The Hairball so there would not be "taco trucks on every corner"; little did they know that soon blade wagons will be rolling down their every street.

I think it is a Rule of chorizo that it be "spiced beyond recognition"; this allows you to eat it without confronting the fact you are gnawing on lips, cheeks, nodes, and various other forms of pig face. Sometimes it is better not to Know.

up
0 users have voted.
Lily O Lady's picture

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

When I lived in Greece I acquired a taste for this...on occasion. It is quite a unique wine.

So back in the states years later my wife went to a wine store to get me a bottle. The guy had not heard of it, but being a wine snob he wanted to know what vitner and what year I liked. My wife laughed.

Said wine snob looked down on my wife and again said a wine was very dependent on where it was grown and the year. Again my wife laughed.

She said they put pine resin in it. So any will do. Preferably one that is fresh and has a screw top. Wine snob was not amused.

up
0 users have voted.
Mark from Queens's picture

Poor, unwitting kids are given it by lazy parents to mask food they don't want to eat, which then grows into a lifelong dependency promoted by John Kerry's wife's family, the corrupt FDA and the foul fast food monopolies, putting us on the fast track to diabetes and heart disease. Not to mention how it mangles our taste buds in the way all mostly horrible American corporate cooking does, from appreciating real food, food cooked slow and with good, fresh ingredients and a variety of spices and herbs not over-salted and sugared.

My mom did the same to us when we were kids. But as an adult starting to eat real food and especially cuisine from around the world (ones that would also throw a cleaver at you like the French would if you asked for the high-fructose dominated ketchup), I now sort of see it as one of the more emblematic things I despise about corporate America. If I ever do use it, on the rare occasions someone has fries in my midst, I fix it up with Tabasco at the very least or use it very sparingly until the sugary sweet taste, having readjusted my taste buds to the panoply of foods across the globe, overwhelms and repulses me.

Ketchup is to eating good food what wanting to travel to Morocco is when you end up in Epcot Center in Orlando thinking you've experienced Marrakesh. You don't want the real thing so you'll settle for the facsimile or the coverup, as it were. All my old friends know how much I've come to disdain ketchup. They always seem kind of surprised when I go into a rant about how it should never, ever be at the breakfast table, for starters. Too gross and heavy-handed first thing in the morning. And then on a fucking hot dog? Could be the biggest food mortal sin of all to me. The only reason to ever even have a hot dog in the first place, is because it only exists as a vehicle for good mustard. I remember when telling my sister of how I haven't had a bottle of ketchup in my fridge in decades, she recounted how an Italian friend of ours was at her house and was perplexed to see one in hers, and confused simply asked her "why?"

In the same way it seems every suburban American family has been trained to have the tv on all throughout the day in the background, and to take their evermore truncated vacation days and wastes them on Disneyworld, and feels the need to get overextended financially buying new cars, refinancing mortgages, stockpiling toys for their backyards b/c they have to keep up with the Joneses, no one stops to think about the bottle of ketchup on every table as if it written into the Constitution. Why do we always have to disguise or cover things up? There's a metaphor in there about our culture.

American love their malls, where they get to satisfy their two most prominent addictions: Shoppin' and Eatin'

Was held rapt from your first paragraph. Read it while eating lunch and laughed so many times I had to tell my partner about you and what an amazing writer you are. This was some Dada-esque, time traveling, cultural culinary smackdown of epic proportions. Loved it.

The dopey "Freedom Fries" thing I think even had an equivalent in WW1. Can't remember now, but there was some kind of equivalent patriotic re-naming of some food. Oh yeah, maybe sauerkraut (the other essential ingredient if you are ever going to risk taking on a hot dog) became "Freedom Cabbage" or something.

Which is why sometimes when you are French, you jump on the bulldozer, and you mow down the McDonalds. You then become a Hero, and Juliette Binoche says you should be the president; you haven’t made it there, yet, but you are in the European Parliament.

The Germans have never bulldozed a McDonalds, because that would violate Order. Also, they do not really mind a McDonalds, so long as the hamburgers are pickled, and the beer is served in a stein the size of a horse.

Reminded me of a story a former girlfriend from CZ told me. When McDonald's opened in Prague she went down with her friends and pelted the place with rocks. She went up in my book that day. Moia mala holka, the Czech Rebel.

The wild gastronomic ride you take us on from France to Germany to Britain to Ireland to Mexico, with discursive flights into mind-altering imbibing, was just delightfully hilarious. Also really loved the takedown of lame mainstream white culture and the perfect placement of photos to accent the wide array of anecdotes you collect. Felt like I was reading all those great dissenting radical papers I missed out on b/c I was too young, like National Lampoon, the local alternative weeklies every city used to have such as the Village Voice, or maybe Ramparts.

Recently I walked by the crepes place in the town down the hill and saw on the sidewalk a signboard urging me inside to consume "chorizo crepes." This amused me pleasantly. As yet another in the ceaseless series of signs and wonders that, Hairballs notwithstanding, the Americans are browning.

Spanish chorizo, that is generally cooked and cured and stuffed in a casing, and can be wielded as a weapon, like a good stick of salami, if a chair leg or baseball bat is not at hand.

But I knew this was not the sort of chorizo the crepes-people wanted me to come eat. They wanted me, instead, to feast on Mexican chorizo. Which is a bruja brew of animal parts you really don't want to know anything about, that are subsumed in many powerful spices, so that you will not know or care that you are eating cheeks, lips, lymph nodes, salivary glands, and various other assorted sorts of offal.

A crepe doesn't really want Mexican chorizo in it, but that is just too bad. Because in the town down the hill, chorizo is in everything—even the milkshakes. This is because the town down the hill, it is a college town. And the first thing that an American human does, when s/he goes off to college, is Drink. Then, inelcutably, the collegian Suffers. The sufferer then searches, desperately, for a means by which to relieve that suffering. The sufferer is then introduced, by those who have so suffered before, to chorizo. Because Mexican chorizo, and especially when mixed with scrambled eggs, contains, within its endless outpourings of spiced pig-face grease, some magical mystery tour of healing properties, sufficient to reduce the Suffering at least to a place where the sufferer will not Die, from the Drinking....

Anyway. While walking to the Syrian cigarette store, a couple years ago, I passed a signboard that read: "Pancake Breakfast." And, scrawled under those words, like sort of in italics, was "And Burritos."

I loved that so much. A "pancake breakfast," that is a complete white-people thing. Where you go, early on a weekend morning, into an Oddfellows Hall, or onto a covered bridge, or something like that, and there you eat pancakes, for which you have forked over dollars, for some sort of worthy white-people charity.

A traditional pancake breakfast: as white as the Bee Gees.

But, now, there were burritos in it.

The pancake breakfasts, they had gone brown.

Through many decades, I would recurrently write in the newspapers, that the white people, they had better hope, that when the brown people inevitably became ascendant, they would not treat the white people, as the white people had treated them.

How do you do it?

Fucking sheer brilliance.

up
0 users have voted.

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

janis b's picture

@Mark from Queens

My guess is hecate does it with some kind of magic that engages parts of the brain that are, as you say, Dada-esque.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@Mark from Queens
about the hot dogs. They want mustard. And nothing at all to do with ketchup.

Brain scans of hot dogs reveal high levels of stress, when confronted with ketchup. Using powerful electron microscopes, Science Men have confirmed that hot dogs actually try to physically move away, when menaced by ketchup.

up
0 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

I've read a hell of a lot of tremendous essays here in the last couple of years, but Chorizo Crepes might just be my favorite. It's like a rambling culinary Jack Kerouac ride or something. Dada-esque perhaps, but waaaaay more fun!

I must tell you, dear hecate, that I have witnessed, here in Texas, an abomination. Your essay brought it to mind. Sometimes my wife and I discuss this (she also witnessed this - in fact, more than me), but we never discuss it near any mealtime. It is this: a teenager, given a hotdog straight off the grill, ensconced same in a pure white Wonder Bread bun. Then came The Act: she smothered the steaming factory-fresh hotdog in mayonnaise! She did devour the defiled sausage. This caused instant nausea when my poor wife observed it. In fact, as I mentioned, the subject is verboten near a dining table.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@travelerxxx
a torment of Hell, a hot dog slathered in mayonnaise, plopped in a Wonder bun. And then someone ate it! Don't they have Laws, there in Texas, prohibiting these atrocities? Witnessing such a horror inflicts more trauma than watching a beheading.

up
0 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@hecate

The wife and I have found it therapeutic to discuss it occasionally, trying to see the humor in it, but neither of us are surprised that this occurred in Texas. Neither of us are native Texans and have observed that no part of the nation is exempt from such excesses. At an early age, my wife was exposed to something known as the Garbage Plate. This emanates from an (evidently) mafia den/restaurant in Rochester, NY, known as Nick Tahou's.

Garbage Plate

Wife relates that she was never allowed to enter said Nick Tahou's without the accompaniment of a male relative, so I give credence to the mafia story.

Me, I'm from Kansas, so nothing done in Texas surprises me much.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@travelerxxx
seems like maybe it was created by cardiovascular surgeons, to keep business flowing. Or, since you say it's a mob joint, a clever means by which to dispose of troublesome fellows like Jimmy Hoffa. That's why his remains have never been found: they went out on the Garbage Plate!

Kansas as I recall is part of the great Midwestern "buffet belt." For thousands of miles, they are ceaselessly trying to get you into the buffets. I was surprised that when Thomas Frank asked What's The Matter With Kansas? he devoted no words to the buffets. This I believe to be a serious Omission.

up
0 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@hecate

You have pegged the Midwest well, hecate, regarding the "buffet belt." My elderly parents still consider such as one of the heights of dining. Occasionally the wife and I make the trek north to visit and invariably end up in one of these establishments. As you point out, they are difficult to avoid.

Thomas Frank is innocent in that, being a native Kansan, he has seen so many corporate chain buffets that they have become as trees in the forest.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@travelerxxx
the attraction of steam, for Kansans. Once I was in the state, in late autumn, standing by the side of the road, entranced by the rutted wheel-tracks of wagons that had rolled through more than a century before, when I felt the "breeze" come rippling over the flatlands and creep directly into my bones, weather flowing pretty much unimpeded all the way down from the Arctic, and I knew that soon the Kansans would want to be fully enveloped, in steam.

What you want to do, is throw up a bunch of mountains, to break those winds. But they don't have those, in the plains states. So, there is steam, from the buffets.

up
0 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@hecate

The Osage (and others) didn't crave steam as they had the grass. William Least-Heat Moon explores this type of thinking in PrairyErth. The land itself may want the barrier of mountains but for now there is only the wind. The land of the southern wind may have birthed Pizza Hut, but now even that has abandoned it.

up
0 users have voted.

Great read! Seems as if I've been connected with cooking, restaurants and foodies all my adult life. Your comment re windows reminded me of the summer I was a hostess at a very popular restaurant on the Cape. One night as I was walking through the dimly lit rooms scanning for empty tables, I was struck by the faces, over a hundred of them, splashed by candle light, and all pushing food into their mouths at mach speed and chewing! All those chewing faces! It was so gross I couldn't stand to look at it and just couldn't eat. I lost about 15 lbs that summer.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

@GusBecause
time stands stand still, freezing you in a moment in which can fully feel The Horror. Sounds like that's what happened to you, with the hundred candlelit humans greedily shoveling foodstuffs down their gullets. Humans when they eating, and especially in mass quantities, can indeed turn all stomachs—like lifting the lid on the Doggie Dooley, and watching the dung beetles feed. Sam Peckinpah, who knew horror, in his film Cross Of Iron presents a scene of the humans with the food that is more disturbing than some of the scenes of them getting shot.

On the other hand, it appears you may have hit on a diet wonderment: stand and Look at a flock of chewing humans, and in this way be so put off your feed you will drop 15 pounds in three months.

; )

up
0 users have voted.